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Polman: John Edwards a cad, not a criminal

Be thankful that fate didn’t land you on the John Edwards jury.

Can you imagine spending five or six weeks of your life trying to determine whether a fallen politician deserves jail for having concealed an affair and love child with the help of a million bucks that may or may not be deemed illegal campaign contributions under federal law? My mind reels just from writing that sentence.

It’s no surprise that the Justice Department case against the two-time Democratic presidential candidate basically crashed and burned. The jurors got it right Thursday when they exonerated Edwards on one count, deadlocked on the other five counts, and the judge declared a mistrial.

In nine days of deliberation, they couldn’t bring themselves to believe that Edwards was a criminal — scoundrel, yes; jailbird no — just because he took money from a pair of rich friends to abet his perfidy.

What would be the point of throwing him in the slammer? It was a waste of time and money to prosecute sin.

Edwards’ worst sin, at least in the public realm, was his hypocrisy. He touted himself as a morality candidate. His mantra was “faith, family, responsibility.” During a debate in October ‘07, he said: “It is crucial for (voters) to determine who they can trust, who’s honest, who is sincere, who has integrity.”

Soon after Edwards made that pitch on stage in Philadelphia, he secretly persuaded Andrew Young, his hapless aide-acolyte, to take the fall for him, to claim falsely paternity of Rielle Hunter’s child. How Edwards could have possibly believed he’d be able to sustain this cover-up is an issue best left to the shrinks. How he could have allowed his extramarital playmate to record their sex on video — again, call in the shrinks.

If Edwards had won the ‘08 nomination, only to have the scandal detonate in the mainstream press (as it did that summer), he would have sunk his party. That’s a big reason why Democrats shun him today. As for Americans in general, they gave Edwards a 3 percent approval rating in a recent national poll. It takes a special kind of knave to score lower than Donald Trump.

The moral judgment on Edwards has long been rendered. Why muck it up with legalities?

So let us not try to criminalize sin. The Justice Department should stick to the obvious corruption cases, like in 2006, when Democratic Congressman William Jefferson got caught with $90,000 in his freezer.

Rich Lowry, who edits the conservative National Review, was right not long ago when he said, “John Edwards belongs under a rock, not in jail.” And that’s where Edwards dwells today. In North Carolina, by all accounts, he rarely leaves his house. Back when Edwards was gorging on hubris and inhaling the heady vapors of fame, he told the voters: “Character, conviction, good judgment. I’m happy to have people judge me on that basis.”